Roker stands by criticism of New York Mayor de Blasio, but sorry for one tweet

2014-02-14T12:37:00.000Z

Eun Kyung Kim

TODAY

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Al Roker took to Twitter to criticize New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over the way he handled school closures.

TODAY weather forecaster Al Roker apologized Friday for a “low blow” comment he made about Bill de Blasio on Thursday, but stood by all of his other criticism toward the New York City mayor over the way he handled school closures during this week’s major winter storm.

On Thursday, Roker took de Blasio to task in a series of tweets for his decisions to first keep schools open amid the storm, and then close them later in the day.

But he also issued an apology, noting the back-and-forth between him and the mayor got a little testy.

“I do have one tweet that I do regret in the heat — I'm very passionate about the weather," he explained. "I made a prediction that there would be only one term of his administration. I apologize for that. That was a little below the line.”

At a news conference Thursday, de Blasio responded to Roker's criticism by saying that though he respected the TODAY meteorologist, "it’s a different thing to run a city than to give the weather on TV."

“I respect all the meteorologists out there," de Blasio said, "but the one I respect the most is called the National Weather Service ... and they just affirmed to us on the call before we came out to you, that this went faster and heavier than their projections last night.”

On Friday, Savannah Guthrie tried to lighten up the mood by taking note of their current surroundings. While the snowy squabble centered on New York City, all the TODAY anchors were in Sochi, Russia at the time covering the Winter Olympics.

"By the way, the IOC just added tweeting to the 2018 Winter Games," Guthrie said. "It’s a tough competition."